National Parks for Natal? Zululand's Game Reserves and the Shaping of Conservation Management Policy in Natal 1920s to 1940s

Abstract

This article sets out to explore the question of why conservation management in Natal took the particular form it did by 1947 - a form largely retained in the region today. The Act which brought into being the Union of South Africa in 1910 made wildlife preservation a provincial competency. However over the next century three of the four original provinces in the Union gradually brought their most important parks and game reserves under the 1926 National Parks Act. Natal did not: it retained provincial control of all its conservation resources. Tourists to the province of KwaZulu-Natal today may not realise that the main reserves in the Zululand region - for example what is now the combined Hluhluwe-Umfolozi park, for many years the province's flagship game reserves - are not in fact national parks. At least for the present, they continue to fall under the provincial conservation board (currently called the KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Services or Ezemvelo-KZN Wildlife) rather than under the South African National Parks Board.